Apple is celebrating one billion podcast subscriptions on the iTunes Store with a special section in the Podcasts category on iTunes with the most popular podcast titles including 60 Minutes, NBC Nightly News and podcasts from NPR, WNYC, Kevin Smith, and Chris Hardwick.
Apple says that the one billion podcast subscriptions were spread across 250,000 unique podcasts in over 100 languages. It also mentioned that more than 8 million podcast episodes have been published in the iTunes Store till date. Apple
tweeted about the new section through the iTunes Podcasts handle.
Apple talks about Podcasts on the specials section, mentioning that Podcasts on iTunes launched in the summer of 2005 and since then it's seen several downloads and subscriptions. Subscriptions suggest engagement between the podcast creators and listeners, though it's not necessary that subscribers listen to each and every episode of a podcast.
The section offers the best podcasts of all time under categories like The Classics, What's Hot and New & Noteworthy.
Besides, iTunes, Apple also offers a dedicated Podcasts app for iOS that allows users to browse and subscribe to podcasts. It also gives users the ability to create custom stations that automatically update with new episodes when they become available.
For the uninitiated, a podcast consists of a series of episodes that users can subscribe to, and receive new content periodically in the form of audio files (called audio podcast, or simply podcast) or videos (called video podcast, or vodcast).
Recently, Apple
celebrated 5 years of the App Store by offering a number of popular paid apps and games for free. In May, the App Store
had also achieved the feat of Apple's crossing the 50 billion app downloads milestone, and had offered a $10,000 App Store gift card to the customer who downloaded the 50 billionth app, in addition to giving gift cards worth $500 to the next 50 users.